Tourquai Read Online Free PDF

him realize something was wrong. He was in a windowless dressing room. Simple benches ran along the walls, and above the benches was a long row of hangers. The low ceiling and the closed-in smell of wet terry cloth made the room claustrophobic, and the light green paint on the walls had started to flake off. There were five of them, but there was room for just as many more. Nonetheless, Falcon Ècu was alone on his side of the room, and as he was pulling on the mauve socks, his colleagues on the other side could no longer control themselves.
    “It’s hellish,” said a bear Falcon didn’t know, “separating the white laundry sometimes.”
    Everyone laughed. Falcon smiled.
    “You can laugh now,” said Field Mouse Pedersen, “but when you see his mauve balls it’s not going to be as funny.”
    And everyone laughed again, louder this time.
    Field Mouse Pedersen was actually a friendly soul who, like Falcon, worked for Bloodhound at WE on rue de Cadix. He had accompanied Falcon to Tourquai’s Tennis Stadium straight from Nova Park and the scene of Oswald Vulture’s murder. The stadium was in the northwest corner of the district, almost to the food industries. Twelve courts, a manager’s office, a small pro shop, and an even smaller snack bar whose hours of operations no one had yet been able to figure out were housed in a dark green tent that appeared to be inflated to the breaking point; it would probably collapse like a punctured soufflé if a hole were made in the cloth. All the championships in that part of the city were played at the stadium, even though there were many other tennis courts around Tourquai. In accordance with tradition, the police rented the courts the entire first week of June. The dressing rooms were on the basement level.
    Pedersen had not meant anything bad by his little joke, and Falcon did not take offense, either. On the other hand, he was now afraid to continue changing. His tennis shirt was in the trunk. It, too, was mauve, to match the socks. He realized that when he took out the shirt the jibes about the socks would sound like flattery.
    “Is it so strange to want to look nice on the court?” he mumbled.
    But so quietly that no one heard.
    Falcon Ècu had joined the tennis club when he started at the station a year before, and more and more the club seemed like his only chance to approach his colleagues. On the tennis court his merits seemed to come into their own. He was a good loser; that was one of his better qualities. He played to win, he fought his way into a sweat, but he was technically inferior. So he quickly became a popular opponent; he was fun to beat. The club championship included all the police stations in Tourquai, and it had just begun. So far, it was a round-robin tournament, where everyone played everyone.
    Falcon Ècu would not describe himself as a clothes snob, although he realized he might be perceived that way. He had grown up in simple circumstances, and it had always been important to keep himself clean and not shabby. If you could, why not choose a shirt that suited the pink color of your neck? Why not accentuate your natural straight posture by dressing in dark colors and vertical stripes? It was easier when he was a patrol officer, because a uniform suited him. As a detective he had to weigh his vanity against the ridicule he brought on himself. However, Falcon would never go to work in stained, stinking clothes like Larry Bloodhound. He realized that they joked with him when he sorted the pencils on his desk by size, and he had noticed that he was the only one who used disinfectant spray on the computer keyboard. But he did not intend to be ashamed that his clothes were ironed and clean.
    With a sigh he took the mauve tennis shirt out of the trunk and pulled it over his head, while his colleagues on the other side of the dressing room burst into laughter.
    Falcon Ècu was an animal who wanted too much.
    How had that come about? He couldn’t explain it. He